


Aukkanik

by Ias



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Cultural Differences, F/M, Fluff, Language Barrier, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 05:10:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15236058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: For all the words that Goodsir and Silna share, their understanding runs deeper than language.





	Aukkanik

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the Terror Gift Exchange for hegodamask! I hope you enjoy it, friend. 
> 
> A quick note on the languages--I used the [Labrador dictionary](http://www.labradorvirtualmuseum.ca/english-inuttut.htm) for the Inuktitut words, but it's possible (an in fact quite likely) I made some mistakes. A few lines I couldn't figure out how to translate, and so simply left them in English but italicized.

After spending half the night pouring over his own cramped handwriting by meager lamplight, it really should come as no surprise to Goodsir when his eyes finally give out on him.

In the middle of reading aloud a sentence he believes to be an _Inuktitut_ greeting, Goodsir stops, blinking at the page. The words blur and dance before his eyes like the aurora in winter, becoming nothing more than meaningless smears of ink.

“Just a moment,” he mumbles, unthinkingly in English, as he balances his makeshift dictionary on his knee to press his fingertips into the sockets of his eyes. He meant only to rub the bleariness away; but he finds, with his hands pressed to his face and exhaustion weighing heavily on his shoulders, it is easier simply to leave them there.

A light touch on his arm at last calls him back to himself. He lowers his hands to see Silna staring into his face. “Sleep?” she says, also in English.

Goodsir smiles, though without much spirit. He feels the temporary urge to press her fingers where they lay on his arm, but refrains—such a thing would not be gentlemanly, with no escort but the marine sitting outside the door. Not that Silna would mind, or even note such an action as untoward. Strange, how such customs lingered so far past the point where their usefulness ceased.  

Instead, he points to himself—a vague and encompassing gesture with his fingers splayed open. “Tired.” He then closes his eyes and mimes snoring. “Sleep.”

When he opens his eyes again, Silna is smiling. She does so rarely that he is dazzled by it every time—even the close-lipped expression of restrained amusement that puts a glint in her eyes, and a crinkle at their corners. “Tired,” she repeats, rolling the word strangely in her mouth—but after a few repetitions back and forth, she has it—and offers him _pinnguk_ in exchange.

Though he had told her his name on the night their acquaintance truly began, it had been weeks before she had done the same. Goodsir had gathered that names were very important in her culture, and he understood quite well why she would have no good reason, after all his people had done to her, to trust him with it. The thought had made him sad, and ashamed on behalf of his fellows. But he had not and would never press her for it.

She had never protested “Silence,” though Goodsir particularly disliked the moniker. It was a name the men had applied, and in retrospect felt rather tasteless; as if mocking the grief that had stricken her dumb. Even now the name seemed to weigh upon her every time he used it, as if calling into being the quality it described. He had used it as little as possible.

But once they had assembled enough language to begin understanding each other, she had looked him in the eye and offered him her name, if he would swear not to repeat it to any but her. He had immediately agreed, of course—and she had spoken it aloud in an undertone that would not carry through the thin wood of the ship’s walls.

He had not dared to repeat it even then; but as he lay in his bunk that night her name had run circles through his head, and he had mouthed _Silna_ silently to the darkness until sleep finally claimed him.

He has just finished copying the new word into his growing dictionary—the ink has settled to merely trembling slightly before his tired eyes, rather than waltzing across the yellowed page—when the light touch on his arm returns. “ _Do you wish to stop_?” Silna says in Inuktitut. Goodsir cannot catch every word, but he can string together the meaning of the sentence all the same.”

“ _Auka_ ,” Goodsir says, switching to Inuktitut. He has to stop and think a moment before continuing. “ _Atsuilik_ ,” he says, pressing a hand to his chest, though his understanding of the word’s nuances is limited only to mean ‘healthy’. Then he raises a hand to point to his eyes. “ _My eyes are tired_.”

Silna stares at him for a moment before standing. She gestures for him to do the same. “ _Silami_.” Outside.

“ _Silami_?” Goodsir repeats, still sitting on the floor. She begins to explain the word to him, but he raises a hand to stop her. “ _Tukisiak_. _Sok_ _Silami_?” _I understand. Why should we go outside?_

Silna gives him a look—and precedes to say a complicated sentence whose contents contain the words “dark”, “eyes”, “light”, and “no sleep”—perhaps, something to the effect of, “if you will not sleep, you should at least not sit here ruining your eyes in the dark.” 

In the end, he rises without asking for clarification. He will follow wherever she leads.

 

* * *

 

Lieutenant Des Voeux—back on guard duty for the first time in some time, due to the increase in trinkets amassing outside Silna’s berth—eyes them rather suspiciously as they make to leave. “Likely I ought to go with you,” he says, the impulse to tighten his coat around himself at the thought of the cold air that awaits above a seemingly subconscious impulse. Goodsir can see the narrow binding of a book tucked under Des Voeux’s arm; _Gulliver’s Travels_ , Goodsir recalls, if the man has not already finished it. 

Goodsir nods mildly. “If you think that would be best.”

Des Voeux is silent for a long while, his head tilted down in thought and his arms crossed over his chest, fingers drumming absently at the cover of the book pressed to his side. “Damn it all. Go,” he says at last, setting back onto the crate and resting his book on his knee. “My job is to keep any from getting in, not the other way around. Just a keep close eye on her,” he says, with a nod at Silna, “and remember that if she slips off and disappears onto the ice, it’s going to be my head as well as yours.”

“I will remember,” Goodsir says earnestly. “Thank you. We’ll only be a moment. Just taking in the air.”

“You’ll be less than a moment if you don’t want to freeze,” Des Voeux mutters, already opening _Gulliver’s_ once more.

They clamber through the narrow passages of the ship, Goodsir leading the way—though he expects that Silna remembers the way as well as he does. She is not strictly a prisoner here, but—well. Circumstances are not nearly as Goodsir would like them.

They stop before the final hatch so that Goodsir might struggle into his heavy coat, mittens, cap, and scarves; by the end of the procedure he can scarcely bend his arms at the elbow, and even then knows he will feel the cold. The air that seeps in around the edges of the hatch is as chilled as the breath of a cave; when he pulls it open, the darkness which waits outside does nothing to dispel that image. 

 _Erebus_ ’s deck is dark and bitterly cold. The sun has not risen in weeks; this may be their second winter on the ice, but the phenomenon of days without sunlight is not easily adjusted to. From the moment he steps on deck, he begins to shiver; his heavy woolen coat does little to dull the bite of the cold. Silna, on the other hand, appears unperturbed. She merely pulls up the hood of her parka and sets off for the ice-ramp leading from _Erebus’s_ side.

“Mr. Goodsir,” the lookout says as Goodsir makes to pass. “Bit cold to take an evening stroll.”

Goodsir just barely recognizes Mr. Armitage beneath the heavy coats, Welsh wig, and scarf pulled over his face. “Just getting a little fresh air,” Goodsir says with a smile. He sucks in a breath that burns his throat like a draft of spirits. “Ah. Invigorating.”

No matter how lacking the quality of Goodsir’s explanation, Armitage, like Des Voeux, does not volunteer to accompany them.

They descend the ramp, Goodsir with careful, mincing steps and Silna with seemingly no difficulty at all on the hard-packed ice; Goodsir makes a mental note to ask her if he might examine her boots when they are back in the safe warmth of the ship.  On the ice below, the winds have abated for long enough that the men have erected a perimeter of torches on the open plain of ice that stands on Erebus’s leeward side. The smell of burning oil hangs greasy and acrid in the air.

Silna does not flag at the darkness beyond the barrier of torches; she strides right past them, to the edge of the snow plain where the ice begins to rise, her head tilted back beneath its furry hood.

Goodsir follows, casting glances at the ship behind him: it quickly becomes no more distinct than a dark mass hung with flickering lights. He knows well how easy it is for men to be lost a mere two minute walk from the ship; but in the end, he trusts Silna’s ability to guide him safely home. As they walk, he almost offers her his arm on social reflex alone. Hurriedly he turns it into a gesture adjusting his coat, and Silna does not seem to notice.

Instead he stuffs his mittened hands into the relative shelter of his armpits, and keeps close as she leads him towards the pressure ridge which has risen up nearest to the ship. He pauses at its base, but Silna begins to climb without hesitation. With one last nervous look in the direction they came, Goodsir takes some comfort from the fact that the torches are still within sight—though he doubts very much that Erebus can see _them,_ out past the edge of darkness as they are. After months of cramped quarters and no privacy, the thought is as comforting as it is unnerving.

Silna has already advanced halfway up the pressure ridge. Goodsir picks his way up in her footsteps as best he can, until at last a furry hand reaches down into his field of vision; he takes it, and she pulls him up the final rise with surprising strength. At last, they stand atop the ridge; though other bergs still tower over them, Goodsir can see farther across the frozen sea than he has in months, its ridges and chasms as varied as the rooftops of London, if all the city’s lights were to suddenly go out.

Silna, he sees, stares not at the ice but at something above it. He cants his head back to follow her gaze, and is met with a sea of light. The stars are spectacular tonight; it has been some time since Goodsir has thought to admire them. The cares and concerns on the planet’s surface have outweighed the beauty of what lies beyond. But now, standing here with Silna with the full spread of the heavens above, it is impossible not to feel the pull of wonder in his veins.

“ _Ullugiak_ ,” Silna says. When he turns to look at her, he finds her already scrutinizing his face. In the soft glow of starlight, her skin glows like the velvet shawl his mother had worn, so soft it seemed to emit its own light. She points up to the sky. At once Goodsir smiles again, the corners of his mouth already cracking in the cold.

“ _Ullugiak_ ,” he repeats, and then: “Stars.”

“Stars.” He does not have to repeat the word for her twice this time.

Then she steps up close, angling herself at his back with her face just over his shoulder. He can barely feel the grip of her other hand on his shoulder, and yet is intensely aware of it all the same. When she points the next time, it is at a specific patch of the sky; and with her standing so close and her arm aligned with his eyesight, he can immediately distinguish the constellation she means.

“ _Nanurjuk_ ,” she says.

“ _Nanurjuk_ ,” Goodsir repeats, and when she says the word again he can hear the smile in her voice. It takes him several more times to get it, and when he does at last he can feel her gaze on him.

 _“And in your tongue_?” she says.

“Ah, that must be—“ For a moment Goodsir flounders, struggling to dredge up the lessons on astronomy his father had imparted as a child. Then, he laughs. “I can’t remember,” he says honestly, and in English—then repeats it in Inuktitut. In all the months—years, now?—that he has admired them, he has never once wondered at their English names.

This close, Silna’s eyes are as dark and lovely as the spaces between the stars. The light catches in them, two bright points; no mere reflection, but comelier in truth than their counterparts in the sky. When she blinks, that light seems to refract into a million shards.

She resumes her place behind his shoulder, and helps him name the rest of the constellations; and tells him, also the stories associated with each. Her voice rises and falls as she speaks, more animated than he has often has the privilege of hearing her. It strikes him, then, how miserable the ship must seem to her—with its strange food, irregular heat, its close and unfamiliar walls. Likely it is as awful for her as the thought of living out in this frozen landscape is for him.

Though he does his best, as time progresses and Silna works her way across the expanse of the sky, Goodsir finds it harder and harder to ignore the cold. He stamps his booted feet, clenches his jaw against the chattering of his teeth, and keeps his hands pressed beneath his arms—but it is his fingers, more than anything, which begin to ache and then burn, and then feel nothing at all.

He risks shifting positions to flex them, trying to coax the warmth back in—but the gesture catches Silna’s eye, and she immediately looks at him hard.

“I’m alright,” Goodsir says, unconvincingly. He quickly tucks his hands away. 

Understanding flashes across her face. She reaches out and, without hesitation or shyness, tugs his hands back out again and squeezes them, working from the palm to the fingers. Goodsir cannot repress the immediate hiss of pain as the pressure reaches his frozen digits. Immediately she looks back into his face, and he cannot hide his discomfort quickly enough.

She drops his hands, and slips off her own gloves. Goodsir is just opening his mouth to warn her of frostbite when she reaches for him again—and then, to Goodsir’s shock, slips her bare hands past the cuff of his gloves, the pads of her fingers rough and shockingly warm against the curve of Goodsir’s palm. He almost jerks away on impulse—the gesture feels far more intimate than the simple touch of a hand ought; but it has been far longer than Goodsir can remember since he felt a human touch on his skin.

So instead he submits to Silna’s ministrations, her fingers squeezing warmth back into his fingers as she hisses words in Inuktitut under her breath. Their meaning is indistinguishable, but no doubt unflattering towards the make of his clothing.

“I’m really quite alright,” he says, but the words come out soft in the near space between them. At the sound of his voice, Silna looks up again; her hands go still, fingers resting lightly against his palms, their tips against the gap between each finger; very close, in fact, to entwining her fingers with his own. She smiles again, softer this time, and Goodsir cannot help the answering expression on his own face.

After a stretch of time which feels long enough that the sun should have risen at last, Silna slides her hands from his mittens and replaces her own. Distantly, Goodsir makes a note to ask to examine those as well. He has heard the men mock the Netsilik garb, calling it primitive—and he has also removed their blackened fingers and toes after spending too long on deck. He doubts they would appreciate the irony.  

“I suppose we ought to go back,” he says. The line of torches is still visible below, and the dark bulk of _Erebus_ beyond. Silna nods, once, and turns to the pressure ridge—but at once, Goodsir can hold his peace no longer.

“Silna.” He takes a step forward, and then stops in his tracks; it is, he realizes, the first time he has ever spoken her name aloud. She turns back to him, expectant; he is not certain what he was going to say, but he knows it will be inadequate. “ _Nakummek_ ,” he says at last. She nods again, but her eyes are soft.

This time when they stand at the rim of the pressure ridge, she holds out a hand—and guides towards the torchlight and the ship which rises like a dark altar above it—with Goodsir murmuring the names of the Netsilik constellations under his breath like a prayer, and Silna’s hand gripping his tight.  

**Author's Note:**

> Auka - "No"  
> Nanurjuk - "The Spirit of the Polar Bear (Taurus constellation)  
> Nakummek - "Thank you"  
> Aukkanik - "Become warm"


End file.
